There is something fitting about the Travelers landing the week after a US Open. Shinnecock spent four days asking players to grind out pars on greens that behaved like polished marble, and now the Tour decamps to Cromwell, Connecticut, where TPC River Highlands tends to hand out birdies the way a US Open hands out bogeys. The contrast is part of the appeal. The last signature event of the 2026 season tees off on Thursday with a twenty-million-dollar purse, seventy-two players and no cut, and after the attritional misery of a links-firm major, that feels less like a comedown than a release.
Scheffler arrives with something to prove
Scottie Scheffler walks into River Highlands as the betting favourite at around four-to-one, which surprises nobody, and yet he comes carrying the residue of a week that did not go his way. He spent Sunday at Shinnecock walking alongside Wyndham Clark with the career Grand Slam waiting on the far side of a good afternoon, and the afternoon never arrived. The pars piled up, the half-chances slid by, and the world number one left a US Open he had every reason to win with the trophy in someone else’s bag.
The Travelers is the place he is most likely to remind everyone why the slam felt so close. He won here in 2024, outlasting Tom Kim in a playoff after a tournament in which he reached twenty-two under, the kind of number this course allows and Shinnecock would have laughed at. River Highlands suits him because it rewards a sharp iron game and a settled putter, and Scheffler with a grievance is a dangerous animal. If the rust from a flat major Sunday clears early, the rest of the field will spend the weekend chasing.
Bradley defends a title he won the hard way
Keegan Bradley returns as defending champion, and the manner of his win last year is worth remembering. He erased a late deficit and birdied the seventy-second hole to edge Tommy Fleetwood and Russell Henley by a single stroke, the sort of finish that turns a good week into a career memory. Bradley has always played River Highlands like a man who grew up a short drive away, which he more or less did, and the New England galleries treat him accordingly. A third Travelers title would put him in rare company at a tournament he clearly regards as his own.
Fleetwood and Henley are both back, and both will remember exactly how last year ended. Henley arrives ranked inside the world’s top five and playing the steadiest golf of his career, the kind of form that wins ordinary weeks even when it does not produce fireworks. Fleetwood remains the most accomplished player of his generation still waiting for a maiden Tour victory, a statistic that has long since stopped being a curiosity and started to feel like a small injustice. River Highlands, where he has gone close before, would be a reasonable place to put it right.
The field, and the man who is missing
The Travelers has assembled all but one of the eligible top fifty in the world, a roll call that runs through Cameron Young, Matt Fitzpatrick, Justin Rose, Collin Morikawa and Jordan Spieth, with Clark himself arriving fresh from Shinnecock as a two-time major champion still riding the high of a wire-to-wire US Open. Whether a man can win a major on Sunday and summon the same intensity the following Thursday is one of the quiet questions of the week. History suggests the comedown is real, but Clark has spent the season proving the doubters wrong, and there is no reason to assume he will stop now.
The notable absentee is Rory McIlroy, who has chosen to skip the event for the third signature tournament he has missed this year. His reasoning is sound enough. A forgettable Shinnecock that ended at six over has sharpened his focus on the stretch of links golf ahead, and with the Open at Royal Birkdale only weeks away, he would rather arrive at Royal Birkdale rested and sharp than drag a tired game around Connecticut. It is the kind of cold scheduling call that defines the back half of a career, and while the Travelers would plainly prefer to have him, his absence does little to dent a field this deep.
What to watch for
River Highlands is a short, clever course that gives up its birdies to players willing to be aggressive and punishes the timid, which is precisely why it produces the kind of Sunday shootouts that the majors rarely allow. Expect a low number to be in front by Saturday evening and expect it to take something close to twenty under to lift the trophy. After a fortnight of watching the best players in the world suffer at Shinnecock, a week of red figures and reachable par fives is exactly the palate cleanser the season needs before everyone turns their eyes to the seaside.